Baylands Brewery was a garage craft brewer that grew and grew and got better and better. And now they need your help for the next step forward.
Starting out with a 300-litre brew kit in a suburban garage on Baylands Drive in Newlands in northern Wellington in 2012, Baylands launched their first beer at craft-beer mecca Goldings Free Dive in May 2013. By 2014 they had relocated to a new brewery, cellar door and tasting room just off the iconic Jackson Street in Petone. This move saw them expand brewing capacity to 1200 litres and this was recently upgraded to 2500 litres. A new canning machine supports their existing bottling and draft supply.
This expansion has been on the back of loyal punters and some recent impressive brewing competition wins attests to their discernment. This has included Baylands winning the big kahuna – the West Coast IPA challenge in 2021 – with The Hops Awaken. They nearly backed this up by coming runner-up in this year’s WCIPA challenge. If this wasn’t enough, Baylands won a trophy in 2022 at the New Zealand Beer awards for their Slope Shredder NZIPA, beating out some serious competition from other gold medal winners Behemoth, Cassels and Panhead.
Their Hazy IPA Offshore Bandit is a staple of their core range that regularly medals and last year was one of New World Beer & Cider Awards Top 30, alongside Sky Surfer Pale Ale.
Baylands have secured the building adjoining the brewery to put in a new taproom and function room, and hope to have it completed in the next before the Christmas party season. Originally planning to open in April 2022, Covid-related material delays and a busy building industry has pushed this back. “Getting building materials has been truly horrible” says owner-brewer Aidan Styles. “We got our last load of fire-rated gib delivered on September 5.”
This coupled with the worst winter of trading they had seen, led Baylands to come up with an innovative way to fund their expansion. Called ‘Pay it Forward’ it’s a rewards program that allows supporters to buy bar tabs and other rewards at discounted prices. Pay $50 to get a $65 bar tab, pay $100 get $130, $250 for $325. There was also a Pay it Forward – Brewery Tour & Tasting for 10 people – but that has sold out. Aidan says the campaign has just about reached its target so they’ve been able to commit to completing the taproom.
If you want to join in go to https://baylands.beer/collections/rewards or pull into the cellar door at 22 Victoria Street, Petone, Lower Hutt.
Baylands are a small, family-owned brewery unafraid of using new hop varieties to create quality craft beer. Their new taproom will soon provide them a place where they can show off their beers and customers can drink fresh Baylands beers at the source.